» ‘The Powerlessness of Not Saying No’
Jeff Carlson on the Galaxy Alpha’s headphone jack bulge:
What is obvious, and what blatantly contrasts with Apple, is that someone at Samsung failed to say, “No. That’s ugly. Make it better.” As we know from its past products and interviews with Jony Ive and others, Apple wouldn’t let something like that hit the market. It’s a visual distraction. It looks like an error, like someone at Samsung said, “Ehh, it’s good enough. Customers won’t care. Ship it.”
Is that a headphone jack bulge or are you just happy to see me? Ah, you’re a poorly designed phone? OK, then. Carry on.
» ‘Fire Sale for Amazon’s Fire Phone’
Ina Fried for Re/code:
Although Amazon still won’t say how many phones it has sold, the online retailer tacitly admitted weak demand for its Fire Phone Monday, cutting its price to 99 cents with a two-year contract.
Of course, Apple dropped the price on the original iPhone by $200 after it came out. Back in 2007 before the modern smartphone market had really been defined. And it did so by leveraging carrier contracts. And it gave everyone who had bought one at the previous price a $100 store credit.
Also, the lesson here is not that the Fire Phone isn’t selling well. It’s that Apple will surely crumble under this price pressure. Obviously. I mean, duh.
» Grading on a curve
Because of my vast experience with Apple rumors, Macworld has asked me to write a weekly column grading the rumors. Here’s the first edition of “Rumor Has It”.
If you’re hesitant to click over, yes, of course it includes a Bob Mansfield joke. I mean, come on.
» Sponsor: Need / A Monthly for the Modern Gentleman
I’m thrilled to be thanking Need for sponsoring the Very Nice Web Site RSS feed this week. The stuff they focus on is simply great. Check it out.
In our early days, when writing some sort of sponsor post, I typically would’ve written a mundane introductory sentence explaining that “Need is a curated retailer for men.” In the time since, however, I’ve become abundantly aware that the word “curated” is over-used, embarrassing, and ill-fitting.
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Need, a web publication for men. Each month, we take care to source — and frequently co-design — some of the finest products for the modern gentleman. Have a look through both Need, Vol. 9 and our exclusive Need x NYMD collection
» ‘Marc Newson to Join Apple, Jony Ive’s Design Team’
Turns out if you want people to wear your devices you have to design them to be nice looking instead of, well, what’s been done on most of the smartwatches to date.
Here’s a video of Newson talking about his watch design background.
Much-needed iWatch thoughts
Since literally no one is offering their thoughts or speculation on the “iWatch”, I thought I’d weigh in to fill this tremendous vacuum and blah, blah, blah, more jokes pretending no one’s talking about it. I can’t tell you what an “iWatch” might do and I can’t tell you what would actually sell. All I can do is tell you what I would want in one, so here’s my lame list of things I’m interested in seeing in an Apple wrist-wearable thingamabob.
- I don’t want notifications. It’s OK if they’re there as long as I can turn them off (or down). I don’t want to be distracted any more than I already am by my phone. My kid sends me 10,000 Game Center notifications a day. My MacBook Air frequently informs me of FaceBook activity that I could not possibly care less about. If I have those on my wrist I will go insane and I will somehow spontaneously combust, possibly taking out several kittens and puppies nearby. Nobody wants that. Most of the wearables so far seem heavily focused on notifications because many are driven by Android which desperately wants you to keep using the software in order to get your activity data and/or show you ads.
- Payments? Yes, please.
I posted the picture on the right to Twitter the other day after rumors were floated saying Apple was set to announce a new payments systems and devices that use NFC. To tell you the truth, this is the first time an “iWatch” really made sense to me. If you’ve ever used Disney’s MagicBands you know that they’re kind of scary because they make it so easy to buy crap but, on the other hand, they make it so easy. As an added feature to the other things on this list, the ability to pay for something by tapping my wrist on a reader would be pretty great (assuming security haha iCloud LOL). - A watch. This watch thing? It needs to be a watch. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here. And a nice-looking watch, too, not those monstrous freaks of nature that have dominated the category so far.
- Maybe an iPod. I’m not very excited about plugging my headphones into my wrist, but if I didn’t have to take my iPhone when I go running that would be a plus.
- Sensors. I don’t want other people to know about my movements and vitals, but if I could know about them that would be nice.
That’s all I’ve got. I’m sure there’s some other stuff that would be cool that I’m not thinking of. I mean, that’s pretty much a given.
» Countdown to the Apple Special Event
They’re kinda playing this one up a bit, dontcha think?
» ‘Security Trade-Offs’
John Gruber on a missed point in some of the hair-pulling about the celebrity photo theft.
Don’t trust Apple “with any of your data” isn’t just wrong because it’s a hyperbolic overreaction, it’s wrong because it’s potentially dangerous. What has been mostly overlooked in the reaction to this photo leak scandal, and completely lost in Auerbach’s argument, is that backups are a form of security — in the same sense that life insurance is a form of security for your children and spouse.
The Slate post he links to by David Auerbach isn’t the only ridiculous overreaction I’ve seen. Given the current state of security, Apple should rightly be chastised for one thing: allowing unlimited attempts at entering your Find My iPhone password for as long as it did. Yet, Auerback and others write pieces lambasting Apple for security practices shared throughout the industry. If you’re going to lambast Apple for those practices, you have to lambast everyone. Otherwise you’re implying that switching vendors will solve your problem. I guarantee you that someone somewhere is thinking they’ll be safer by switching to Android, while nothing could be further from the truth. Android obviously has its own security problems.
If not forcing two-factor authentication or failing to make security questions more secure is a pox then it’s a pox on all the houses.
» ‘iCloud Flaw Not Source of Celebrity Photo Leak’
Writing for TidBITS, Even if Apple didn’t do anything intentionally wrong,
» ‘Apple denies iCloud breach in celebrity nude photo hack’
The Verge’s Jacob Kastrenakes quoting a statement from Apple:
After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet. None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud® or Find my iPhone.
None that they’ve investigated.
“Oh, Jennifer Lawrence. Oh. Lawrence. I heard ‘Shmawrence’. Oh. Ohhh.”
Darrell Etherington’s parsing of the statement is probably spot on. Accounts were compromised, but the system was not hacked. But if your system allows for unlimited password guesses, it’s kind of an academic distinction.
UPDATE: Rich Mogull says the IBrute force attack — the Python script on GitHub mentioned in the link — was not used in the celebrity photo theft. The brute force method may still have been used.